Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Interdisciplinary Unit

By Allen Golden, Shea Nakamura, Karen Langdon, and Ms. Essler

This is a sample of an interdisciplinary unit created by 7th grade teachers at Jarrett Middle School for the purposes of having our students develop an understanding and appreciation for the animal and plant life in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. This written unit does not have specific lesson plans; rather, it is a framework for an interdisciplinary unit that has been used successfully at Jarrett Middle school. The basics of this interdisciplinary plan revolves around the disciplines of math, science, history, and language arts. Beginning fall of 2005, we will incorporate art into this interdisciplinary unit as well. Below is a quick summary of how our interdisciplinary unit works.

• Social Studies: Students learn about the history of NWHI, its animals, and the human impacts on NWHI.
• Science: students learn about some of the animals and organisms that inhabit NWHI and how they depend on each other.
• Language arts: Students analyze research on NWHI and learn how to use writing to inform others (including the community) about NWHI.
• Math: Students use data and numbers from NWHI to create graphs and make predictions about the animal life in NWHI.
• Art: Students will create paper mache of predatory animals that inhabit NWHI.

Unit plans are here in PDF format.